


Careful

by Match (pachipachi)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: BDSM, M/M, Metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 11:59:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7933813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pachipachi/pseuds/Match
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tarrant submits in private to save face in public. Here find a portrait of their relationship from the outside in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Careful

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblrite stgeekgirl gave this a thoughtful close read, for which I thank her.

Imagine that Tarrant initiates a D/s relationship with Avon. He hasn't sufficient experience to use the correct terminology but I will do it for him. Tarrant has wanted men before, had them, but what lies undiscovered between him and Avon is vaster and more subtle than doing or being done.

Do remember that, Galactic War aside, Tarrant's long been sheltered from true adversity. Imagine his charmed life as a cresting wave rushing towards a constantly receding shore. Anything between him and the next prize might be outmaneuvered, outfought, undermined, or bought off. But Tarrant played down his cards within hours of meeting Avon. He has nothing in reserve, nothing Avon might want, and the man is indifferent to charm.

It's less the nature of Tarrant's offer than the bare fact of his having issued it that piques Avon's interest. He does enjoy being wanted for his more abstruse skills. And the prospect of having Tarrant at his mercy is appealing on many levels, none of them sexual. That will come later. Lust proves the only trap Avon fails to anticpate. Tarrant's pride makes him brittle, but isn't that part of his allure? Avon means only to show Tarrant how to bend without breaking, as Avon himself once learned.

This is the workaday world, understand, not some sort of erotic fairyland. No one is to be "tamed" here, no one "broken." No collars, no contracts, no mind games beyond the usual shipboard politics. Consider the circumstance: Tarrant and Avon and everyone else are careening through a galaxy of strangers, half of whom seem to want to kill them. Sexual obsession and turgid psychodrama are not on the agenda. An hour or two at a time, once or twice a week, is all they're willing to spare.

*

Avon moves his admittedly modest stock of toys and other gear from a couple of cardboard boxes in the back of a cupboard to a lacquer chest at the foot of his bed. He considers supervising Tarrant at installing the necessary hooks and rigging points, but decides against. Better to retain the element of surprise. Avon guesses correctly that Tarrant had kept his hand-me-down Federation trooper's uniform. It requires only minor alteration.

Avon thinks of their time together as "scenes," each one unique. Which of them might be the actor and which the audience depends on who you ask and when you catch them. Tarrant doesn't have a word for it. "Appointments," he might say, if asked. It doesn't do to keep Avon waiting.

*

I imagine you want to know what passed between them in private. How much was play-acting and how much heartfelt, who did what to whom. That's not the story I mean to tell. You may, though, if you like.

*

Secret liaisons are hopeless among a crew of five. The others know, or think they know, that Avon and Tarrant are fucking. Which is not wrong, but not true either.

You might be surprised at how little they actually touch, skin against skin. In fact Tarrant will never see Avon naked. Barefoot, say, or in shirtsleeves, he looks positively indecent. Avon in a dressing gown has the air of a veiled woman consenting to reveal part of her hair. There's nothing objectively erotic about an ordinary male forearm. The frisson, for Tarrant, lies in extracting that small concession. For all he knows, it costs Avon as much to undo a few buttons as it does for Tarrant himself to kneel blindfolded, fingers knotted in his hair.

Tarrant submits in private to save face in public. In fact he'll come to find pleasure in prolonging flight deck squabbles on days when the marks of a strap still burn on his thighs. He needs Avon desperately without liking him all that much, an emotional posture that seems absurd until you're in the thick of it. On the flight deck, away on mission, really anywhere if we're to be honest, Tarrant's got to fight for Avon's attention, let alone respect.

Alone, door latched behind them, Tarrant has that and more. Whether Avon cares _for_ him is beside the point. Tarrant understands, as he is meant to, that Avon is taking care _with_ him.

Elsewhere he'd feel duty-bound to bristle at the barest suggestion of an insult. Here there's no such thing as honor, or shame. It's here alone that Tarrant allows himself to be known, laid bare, _taken care of_. Blindfolded or gagged. Strung up with half an hour's rope work. Unbound and trembling under the lash. Stripped and mocked, painfully aroused, hands and knees, ignored utterly. Any or all, together or sequentially: here there's no humiliation he cannot bear.

Afterwards Avon says little beyond the necessary. _Turn, please, so I can undo that._ Or: _Bad patch here. Don't touch it, I'll fetch a salve._ His voice is soft, his hands tender as they had been clinical or even brutal minutes. Often they lie down together, or Tarrant lies down while Avon sits over him. They would be ashamed to admit it, but you and I can call it by its name: they're cuddling.

*

True desire creeps in on cue, insidious and unwanted. Tarrant is well-built, even fetching under the proper light. There is no possibility he would refuse; there is no possibility Avon would proposition him in that way.

I don't mean that Avon can't imagine himself saying the words. I mean there is in fact a zero probability of his doing so. The distinction is small but crucial. Tenderness offered, tenderness accepted, holds all the dangers of an uncontrolled catalytic reaction.

Even if they were to negotiate a rape scenario there would be moments when the masks fell, moments of caution and reassurance. And when they lose the plot, when they come to themselves as no more than two bodies moving together, alone: it's then Avon fears his entire self would melt. He would surrender utterly. And then who would Tarrant have to look up to?

*

It's reasonable to ask, of all this, which are things Avon tells himself and which are things I'm telling you. That is to say, does Avon know his own heart? He may, but I do not.

It would be better all round if they were able to talk honestly about their relationship, such as it is, and their respective desires. But Tarrant doesn't know how and Avon is reluctant to press him.

There are other things Avon doesn't mention. How, in another life, they might have been able to turn and turn about instead of clinging to their roles. How as an opponent, even a sparring partner, Tarrant doesn't rate. How he misses Blake. How, at moments, feels him still: as a shipboard ghost, an immanence.

*

To say the affair burns itself out implies there was passion involved, a charge both would deny. In truth, they begin to drift apart some time before Avon receives his first anonymized message. And after they find themselves marooned there's little spare time and less privacy.

Perhaps what they were to each other, how they were with each other, was possible only aboard Liberator. Tarrant thought the ship a joy to fly but knew he was only borrowing her. From Jenna, from borrowed memories of Blake, from the threat of being replaced by another pilot, from the ship's own architects. Liberator was salvage and she salvaged them.

*

They say in the long run everyone's dead. Some run longer than others, that's all.

This is, ultimately, the story of two who got everything they wanted because they knew exactly how much was safe to wish for. Let that be a lesson.


End file.
